10 - Ottoman Problems, 1856–1905

Summary

The Crimean War highlighted many of the new conditions in which the British navy operated, but developments soon after the war produced much more crucial changes. In the Crimean War, considerable numbers of ships in both the British and French fleets were powered by steam, though many of these were small paddle steamers which were used as handmaids of the traditional windpowered line-of-battle ships, pulling them into position or into and out of harbour. The next stage in this development, the replacement of paddle power by screw propulsion, had begun, though it was going to be some time before the biggest ships used such power. The paddle steamers had proved to be all too vulnerable to enemy fire, their paddle wheels being very exposed; the screw ships had greater speed and potentially more power and manoeuvrability.

In 1853 Admiral Dundas had sent his messages from Malta to London, first by ship to Marseilles, whence they were sent by telegraph to London. By 1855 cable telegraphy had reached Constantinople and the Crimea, and the admirals found that orders could be sent to them directly from their governments. Napoleon III was notoriously liable to second-guess his commanders, effectively stifling their initiative, unless, like General Pelissier, they were tough-minded enough to ignore him. The British government does not seem to have been quite so interfering, though the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham, had a distinct tendency that way.

These changes – steam power, telegraph, iron ships – tend to be regarded as violently altering naval affairs, but in fact they were the culminating developments of a long line of gradual changes. It took over a century to get from the first small fragile steamships to oil-powered battleships like the Dreadnought; in other words, the speed of change was fairly gradual, and it followed on from continuing changes in ship construction, improvements in the sail plan, better charts and navigation, more accurate means of communication, and copper-sheathing, which had characterised the eighteenth century. The engine for these changes was, of course, the never-ending competition of repeated warfare, and that was also something which continued.